I’ve had very little sleep over the last 48 hours so this may be a somewhat incoherent brain dump in which I write about shit a lot. Please excuse the indulgence. It’s necessary for my sanity.

My 14 week old daughter has had diarrhoea for 3 days. Actually, possibly for 6 but the first three were only 3 poops a day so I thought maybe there was some new developmental phase of the sphincter occurring.  The last three days there have been over 10 poops a day. That’s a lot of poo to clear up.  It’s a very tender bottom for my wee baby.  It’s a horrific amount of nappies going to landfill.  I do try to use reusables but when faced with three pooey nappies in as many hours there is just no way to keep up with the washing.  It’s also very fractured sleep for my wee one, who usually sleeps through the night.  I seem to have the mythical sleeping baby, 10-11 hours is the norm.  I have to only mention that to close friends as announcing that kind of information in yoga class gets you a combination of dirty, envious or disbelieving looks from your peers.  Thing is, even with a baby who sleeps that much, I’m fucking exhausted.  Baby rearing is a relentless pursuit.  No rest for the wicked.  And certainly no rest for the single mother.  I’m sure a certain section of society equates those two things nicely but frankly, those people can kiss my white ass every day and thrice on Sunday.

Anyway, I seem to have digressed already.  I feel like I’ve had my first real ‘Where is the nearest adult? Oh fuck it’s me’ moment.  So, to resume my shitty tale, on the second day of diarrhumpi I had to take my daughter for her MeningitisB vaccine because I’d already missed the previous appointment. I wanted it administered separately from the combined vaccine as they are apparently less likely to develop a fever and therefore less likely to require dosing with Calpol which is full of noxious E numbers.  Fuck only knows why they put things that are known to have ill effects in medicine for children.  I have some tinfoil hat wearing types of friends who would say that the whole pharmaceutical industry is a massive scam purely interested in perpetuating, if not sickness, then certainly drug dependency.  Do conversations of the type  ‘Oh that additive has been linked to hyperactivity disorders so maybe we should remove it from products for children…oh no let’s not because then we can sell more of those ADHD drugs that we conveniently also make’ really happen? I would like to think not but drugs companies making obscene profits must lead to some conflicts of interest.  Either way, when your baby’s temperature hits 39.5 degrees Celsius you hit the panic button and for most people I know, that means grabbing the Calpol syringe.

That’s what happened to us yesterday.  Went for a nice lunch after vaccinations with the ante-natal ladies and Nessie slowly got grumpier and sleepier so we came home.  She continued with the sleepy/grumpy (babies seem to embody each of the seven dwarves at varying stages!) thing for a while then slept for a few hours with me neurotically checking her temperature every half hour or so.  I was feeling a little pleased with myself as she had no fever and so I had escaped the E number roulette wheel.  And then…then it was 39 degrees and my evening changed from smug to panicked.  I got her from her cot and stripped all her clothes off.  She was pale, clammy and burning hot to the touch.  And screaming so loud.  So loud.  Up half a degree from the screaming and I went and found the Calpol, having hidden it in my pre-emptive smugness and loaded the syringe.  I then misjudged the force required and spurted it onto her chin.  I called nhs24, the notoriously annoying helpline and got through to some woman who was clearly just asking me a long list of questions from a script and wouldn’t transfer me to the doctor until  I answered.  All the while trying to drip Calpol onto her tongue so she could lap it and not choke or vomit.  And all the while she was screaming so loud.

By the time I got off the phone she was 40.0 which is way too hot for a baby of this age.  It can trigger seizures and a whole host of other awful reactions.  The nurse had told me she ‘managed to get me an appointment’ in 90 minutes and seemed unconcerned by the temperature.  She had even asked me if I could give the baby to someone else because she couldn’t hear me over the screaming.  No.  No, there is no one else.  There is only me and her and she is screaming and I am holding her impotently.  Waiting for something to change, to worsen or to ease and just hoping the screaming would stop for a good reason.  I tried damp swabbing her which made her scream more so that the temperature went up.  And then, then it started to drop.  And I cried.  And she cried.  And she shat.

All the way through this she was shitting copiously.  And continued to do so every time I managed to get her to sleep thus waking herself up and so the screaming would start again.  I sang her to sleep, I spooned her to sleep, I nursed her to sleep, I cuddled her to sleep over and over until finally we got a 3 hour sleep.  And then a big shitty nappy.  And then more sleep.  When we awoke just before 11am she still had a mild fever and was still shitting.  Which is how today has passed.  I think the fever has finally broken…not so sure about the shitting.

It’s now two days later and the fever is gone but the shitting continues albeit at a slightly slower rate.  Not every fart is a poo and not every nappy change is because of a poo.  So she must be getting better.  I’m exhausted.  I missed my date.  Not that either of those things matter particularly, they just are.